Nickles’ Tongue in Beats II

Nichols (or Nickles, if you prefer), Rainbow Danger Club bassist/producer, has released another taste of his Tongue in Beats project, which should be totally ruling Russia right now.

For this second sampler, Nichols has created a bastard love child out of the unholy union of “some old tracks from one of my favorite bands, RUSH, against some Russian dialogue, Biggie Smalls, Dead Prez, Britney Spears, Rainbow Danger Club (who the heck are they?) Czarnok, Lil Flip and more.”

I’m really happy that Nichols is doing this and it feels of-the-moment, with the whole Mixtape Movement, which has been dominating hip hop. The genre of Hip hop was built upon thievery, taking beats and samples from older songs and making a new animal, so it is a reclaiming of sorts from the time when, realizing there was money to be made, old men and lawyers got into it, which ruined everything.

But then the artists took everything back by taking money out of the equation. That’s where the mixtapes come in

If you check out the site datpiff.com, along with countless other megaupload-type sites, you will find some of the best music of today being put out on mixtapes. And then there’s Soundcloud and Bandcamp, which have helped artists and fans immensely.

These sites contain original sounds that may or may not have been created from something that someone else originally created. And what’s wrong with that? That’s how we propagate culture and styles. That’s how awareness grows. The snake eats its tail and realizes it tastes pretty good.

These people’s credo is to use pre-existing (sometimes copyrighted) sounds to make art. It is a mission for which they don’t get enough credit, although their music is somewhat difficult to listen to in many cases.